


do it

by zukofenty



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Aquamarine!AU, F/M, Lifeguard!Zuko, Mermaid!Katara
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:20:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24852220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zukofenty/pseuds/zukofenty
Summary: The one where Katara’s a mermaid determined to prove love exists. Even if it means tricking the (hot) lifeguard to fall head over tails for her.“Don’t be shy, touch it some more. It’s a little slimy, though.” Suki just gulps. Her eyes haven’t left the blue tail. It was gleaming, despite the yellow glare of their barely working light poles.“Funnily enough, that’s the same thing I said to the guy I let finger my butt in a Cheesecake Factory.”
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 58





	1. bbl vibes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> u used to call me on my shellphone :( late night when you need my love

“Dicks up when I step in the party!” Toph belts, throwing down a towel and the largest bottle of Neutrogena SPF 50+ sunscreen she could find at Target in the sand. “Handle me, who gon handle me?” Bringing out her best spastic dance moves, Toph grabs Suki by the hips and bends her a clean 90 degrees to yike on her. She thrusts her hips as hard as she can and Suki throws it back with an envious level of knee strength and expert technique. 

Suki rolls her eyes, before slapping Toph’s hands on her hips away and shaking out their towel from the sand they’ve managed to kick on it mid twerk. “Who’s ready to have a Hot Girl Summer?” She screams equally as loud, and doesn’t particularly mind the many heads that turn and scoff their way. 

She placed the rest of their belongings on the beach towel for another summer day of Zuko Watching™.

She squirts out nearly the entire bottle of sunscreen and slathers away at Toph’s shoulders (she burns almost as badly as the disappointment you feel when you grow up and learn that there are far too many men who willingly sleep in their jeans). Summers at Ember Island were a temporary escape for some. The tourists seem to ramp around this time, eager to taste the kiss of the ocean, embrace the licks of freedom it brought. The feelings of bliss when you come back exhausted after spending the day in the ocean, sunkissed and stomach somehow always craving Cheetos, is like no other. That’s why so many people crave the lazy memories of summer’s haze. Even if it meant getting sand all up in your vag. 

Initially, it was like a prison for the duo. Toph banished to her grandparents’ home at Ember Island after her parents were tired of her, Suki forced to endure _another_ world shattering move for her mom’s ocean cleanup projects. 

Sometimes, you have to reach the lowest points of your life before Rihanna herself reveals the blessings in disguises. 

They managed to find each other at a taekwondo fight club (The first rule of fight club? Regularly change your tampon.) Suki promised she wouldn’t get attached. After all, she could never quite pick up where her friendships left off when she was moving seemingly every other second. It hurt too much to get attached. Then again, Suki thinks she’s found her soulmate when she watches Toph trying to choke the various man-children in their club to death when they tried rifling through her duffle bag. 

“I’d rather catch an assault charge than tolerate a man.” Suki couldn’t hold back her laugh when she bought the girl a matcha flavored ice cream cone as reparations for fighting in her honor. 

After finding and signing up for an all female club together, they were practically attached at the pubic hairs. They went through middle school, high school together. They were determined to spend each and every last second they had that summer with each other. Before college, before Suki had to move across the world again. 

“We were supposed to get our HPV vaccinations together! How am I going to survive college without you?” Toph yelps, crafting up an intricate sand town. Suki’s too busy trying to discreetly peer up at the lifeguard tower to focus on her feelings. 

Zuko Watching™ quickly became the duo’s tradition after he came back from college. It was easy enough, with them spending their free time between their summer jobs at the beach. Even if it meant Suki watching for the most part, and describing the shape of his biceps to Toph’s eager ears. It wasn’t their fault he became a lifeguard and spent every waking second seemingly shirtless. It was dangerous, the way he was living. A shirt could easily protect him from the new divorcees who seemingly sprayed him like a cat in heat whenever they walked by. 

He was always hot and cool in the way nerdy and shy boys were. Just a smidgen of freaky and anger issues, those types of guys were always obsessed with doing random punches and kicks in the school hallway while kids were trying to eat their Doritos in between passing period in peace, and somehow managed to always wear clothes too big for their frame, their sneakers somehow scuffed, even right out of the box. He didn’t pay much attention to anyone else, minding his own business until he came back in the summer seemingly determined to make the female population ready to set back feminism a few years and always be at the ready to suck his sweaty, vienna sausage looking penis dry. 

Now, he was hotter and cooler after he figured out he’s hot and cool. He did the things all Asian guys did once they listened to too many Drake songs and hit the gym and survived day to day with nothing more than a nicotine dependency and a prayer. Soon enough, Zuko was no longer just a nerdy kid with an unhealthy fascination with Barbara Streisand.

They’ve competed alongside him when he was also a student at the local taekwondo studio, and both them and their damp underwear were quickly privy to his sudden transformation. 

Suki plops her sunglasses on, and digs her back deeper in the ridges of sand. “May the best pussy win. On your mark, get set, go, bitch!” 

“I think he’ll look prettier standing next to me,” Toph lambasts, until she feels it. It was familiar. The footsteps, the giggles, the perfume that smelled like Monistat and Maybelline Baby Lips lip balm. “Uh oh.” Suki is midway through her cinnamon pretzel when she sees her. 

“No motherfucking way!” She screams at the top of her lungs. “I can’t believe she actually did it! She actually got a Brazilian Butt Lift!” Suki incredulously screeches, before ducking under their umbrella after her volume nearly blows their cover. It was almost like slow motion, the way Mai’s cheeks jiggled, glistened in the sunlight. Her little twirl and flip of the hair catches Zuko’s eyes and a blush quickly spreads across his cheeks. 

“That’s no fair!” I’ve always wanted a BBL!” Suki snatches the binoculars from Toph’s hands. 

Toph dusts away the sand collecting in her bangs. “Whatever, the only depth Mai has is in her anal canal.” She still resents her ever since she slapped Toph when she accidentally kicked her puff bar charger junior year. 

“Toph, why do you even have a pair of these?” Suki tries fiddling with the heavy binoculars, the device nearly slipping between her salt-water laden hands. 

“Zuko needs to know I’m always watching,” she says without hesitation. 

Suki crosses her arms against her chest. “Right. That sounds as healthy as your colon on Kardashian flat tummy tea you bought last month.” 

“Suki, it was one time! It’s really not my fault you decided to put your wholehearted trust in me with your debit card.” 

“Let’s not forget you bought Michelle Obama’s _Becoming_ audiobook and a pair of freaky Furry socks for your fursona,” Suki hums, adjusting the binocular’s focus. 

Toph scoffs, picking the dirt underneath her fingernails. “So?” 

Suki snorts. “What turns you on more? The sound of a former First Lady’s voice, or having paws on a pair of your socks to cater to a very dark and specific fetish?”

“Heroin,” she says immediately. 

“Wasn’t an option.” 

The girls watched on as the flirting ensued. Mai was always cool. It wasn’t fair, when she had everything in life. Rich, pretty, ran over a squirrel with a Mercedes and then paid someone to heal the squirrel back to life and teach it how to read, she had the unbridled anger, trust fund, and Instagram aesthetic of the coolest bitch in town. 

“He’s doing the thing!” Suki warns, eyes laser focused. They’ve studied enough Zuko behavior over the last month to realize when his peepee was excited. 

Toph gasps, putting a hand to her mouth in shock. “You’ve got to be shitting me, woman.” 

“Hit the juul.” Suki begins. 

“Stretch the arms.” 

“And flex,” Toph finishes, clutching Suki’s hand in despair. 

“NO!” The girls wail, falling back on the sand in sync. 

//

“How about ‘Into You’ by Miss Ariana Grande?” Suki is about to hand the mic to Toph but promptly recoils. “Why did you just twitch?”

“Sorry, I think it’s my body’s automatic reaction. I get triggered and memories of summer 2016 just start flooding my brain. If you sing the first note and I hear _‘I’m so into you, I can barely breathe_ ,’ I think I’ll queef.” 

Suki blows a stray hair from covering her eyes. Despite her mother’s many protests to pack up her room, she’s been hiding in an old, abandoned shop Toph’s grandparents converted to a playhouse for her. Complete with a karaoke machine, snacks, and a few of the still working vending machines, it was always a perfect spot for sleepovers since middle school. 

“Think of a song!” Suki flipped through the song listings, determined to yodel out an Avril Lavigene song after Toph’s choice. 

“I’m sorry, I’m too busy thinking of what Zuko’s penis would look like,” Toph says, dreamily. 

“You don’t even know what a penis looks like! You will never know what a penis looks like!” Suki emphasizes, slapping Toph straight on the ass. 

“You hit my pad, not my ass bitch.” Toph rubs at the spot she just smacked, huffing. 

“Oops,” Suki says, in the most insincere voice she could muster. 

Toph tries her best to not hit the girl. “Besides, Zuko can help me learn. If you call me a pussy put Zuko’s in front of it!” 

“Wack ass! My way! My way! Or the highway!” Suki finishes the Tik Tok song, complete with a body roll and an exquisite shake of the ass cheeks. 

Toph’s laugh sounds fake almost, even when she tries her best to be devoid of any emotion. “Who’s going to learn Tik Tok dances with me on the weekends? Who’s going to lie to me and tell me that my contour is blended?” She murmurs, playing with her longer bangs. 

“Me bitch!” Suki nuzzles the girl, holding her for dear life. “There’s Facetime!” She tries her best to keep the sadness out of her voice. It didn’t seem like it was working. 

“What if this is it?” And for just a second, time seems to stop. The pitter patter of the insistent rain was an easy distraction. A moment of respite, despite living with the constant reminder of the uncertainty of life playing in the back of your head like elevator music, or a commercial that reminds you that your heartburn medication can cause osteoporosis. 

“Remember,” Suki puts a comforting hand to Toph’s shoulder. “Faith, trust, pussy dust.” 

“Bars.” Toph clutches her stomach when she starts laughing too hard. “You should sell that verse to Jhené Aiko.” 

Suki grabs both of Toph’s hands before humming. The storm outside was relentless, the hardest to hit Ember Island in years. The perfect time to call out to celestial beings for a miracle. “Oh God of expensive, yet moisturizing lip glosses and radio-friendly songs about murdering men, Rihanna useth your power to keep my mom from moving us to the Earth Nation where my hair cannot handle the humidity!” Suki takes a breath. “Maketh her see the errors of her ways and tell her to dye her roots, too. Keepth us in Ember Island!” 

The roar of the thunder shocks Toph right out of her seat. 

“Ameneth.”

Laughter fills the tiny room, their sleeping bags forgotten when a much more convenient heat source was holding onto each other. Suki gets up to choose “Bitch Better Have My Money,” to sing their hearts out when the power cuts out, the vending machine begins spurting out Coke bottles, and Toph’s screams pierce her ears. 

“Are you dead? Don’t die! We haven’t even gotten a yeast infection yet! We haven’t lived life yet!” Toph reaches out, hand grasping for the girl’s familiar touch. 

“Hey Toph?” 

“Yeah?” Toph was quiet, shaking like a leaf. Suki’s seen Toph scared exactly two times in her life. The time she forgot to cancel her Spotify subscription and they charged her card another $9.99 for the next month even when she switched to Apple Music. The other time was when she accidentally sent a Snapchat to Zuko saying she wanted to use his pubes as floss. (Suki broke into his house and ‘accidentally’ dropped a bottle of Listerine all over the phone.) 

“You are totally, eternally, and completely my best friend.” 

“You’re my best friend, too,” Toph says softly. 

“Also, I broke your vibrator charger.” 

Toph pulls at Suki’s hair. “I put my grandma on my Death Note for like a week because of you.” 

“Smack cam!” 

//

Toph was never a fan of water. 

See, she’s mastered the art of living through life _her way_ with her money makers: her feet. Not only did they fund her many tickets to Furry conventions with how many old men were willing to fork over money for a Pay-Per-View seat to her soles via OnlyFans, her feet connected her easily with the world, even better than most people were able to. 

Water, as beautiful as it was to others, served up a special type of punishment for her. Water blurred that bond. Water made her lose the people closest to her. No matter how many years go by, no matter how much she’s managed to be surrounded by it, it always manages to propel her into darkness. 

She doesn’t know why it drew her in. At first, Suki thought Zuko left the pool lights on yet _again_ (because he’s pretty, no one corrects him), but there was just something so _different_. A light that seemingly possessed Toph.

One minute, they were ogling Zuko trying to help her grandparents clean up their pool at their beach club, ravaged by the storm. The next, Toph’s throat was burning, and no matter how loud she screamed when she felt _it_ grabbing at her hand, the noise was muted by the cover of water. 

“Did you sniff his nipple?” Suki whispers, cradling the girl. They were both drenched head to toe in water. While Zuko was making a show of ripping off his shirt dramatically to fulfill the lifeguard role and rescue Toph, of course he got caught in all the fabric. Suki just rolled her eyes and jumped in the water to rescue her friend. Who, instead of say _thanking her best friend for saving her life_ , proceeded to immediately reach out to hug Zuko once she was safely above water. “Huh, sniff-a-nipple. Try saying that three times fast.” 

“Suki! Focus! Yes, his man titties felt glorious, but you’re missing the point! _Something_ was in the water.” 

Her grandparents insisted on closing off the pool to clean another day, lest someone also slip in. 

“Put on your big girl tampon and meet me here at nightfall,” Suki stands firm, even when Toph opens her mouth to object. 

//

“What if it was just some seaweed?” Suki takes a bite from her supply of nervous-snacking gummy worms.

“I...I don’t think so. It felt so... _alive_.” With the cover of nightfall, they snuck to the beach club, grabbing the keys and ducking under the caution tape. Toph’s grandparents ran a series of shops at the beach front and they lived right next door. All they had to do was wait for her grandparents to fall asleep.

Suki tried a number of things. Dropping in sardines, expired fish sticks, a California roll that she forgot to throw away three months ago that was hidden in the back of her mom’s work fridge. 

“Can we hurry the fuck up? I need to lay down. I just took a dump and my bootyhole’s all loose.” 

Suki smacks the smaller girl’s forehead. “Shut up, Toph.” 

“Never.” She slaps right back, knocking nearly her entire bag of faux seafood into the pool. 

“Look, it was probably a figment of your Zuko nipple thirst induced imagination!” 

“You know what, you can eat a load of my salty nuts and leave me the fuck—” 

“I think I know what it was.” A velvety voice cuts through their argument, instantly stopping the girls. 

It catches their attention instantly. The water almost changing texture in the blink of an eye. The iridescent tail coming up from beneath the ebbing of the dirty waves. “I’m guessing,” she just twirls a lock of her luscious hair absentmindedly. “A mermaid?”

A quirk of her perfectly sculpted eyebrow has the girls gulping. They couldn’t help but freeze, bodies stuck in shock. She seemed to move in slow motion, only her eyes peeking out from under the water. Until she disappears underneath, and they are left to desperately attempt to find her. 

In a flash, her head reappears, right next to them at the edge of the pool. 

Words die on their tongues, any sound they made sounded like a garbled mess. 

“Boo, bitches.” 

The two girls immediately start screaming at the top of their lungs. Until, Toph presses a firm hand to Suki’s mouth. 

“No, no, no, no, no!” Suki protests, clutching her hair in frustration. “You’re a—like a whole ass—a vagina with a tail looking—” 

Katara furrows her brow in confusion as the girl continues to stammer. “You can say it. C’mon, I believe in you!” The sarcasm dripped off of every single word. 

“ _Mer. Maid._ Mermaid!” She twirls around, bringing a stream of water cleanly through the air and bouncing it between her two hands. “Half fish, half woman. We have singing sea creatures following us and giving us advice and shitting everywhere to fertilize kelp. Long hair flowing through the wind, desperately looking for our prince so we can give up our tails for love and _blah blah blah_.” 

She ducks underneath the water, jumping up and slapping her hands dramatically on the pool’s ledge to fulfill what sick joy she got from making Toph shit herself with her recovering anus. “For the record, I would rather separate the water hydrogen by oxygen than do some fuck fish shit like that. Especially for a mediocre looking white man like Prince Eric.” 

Suki nods along. “Right?” There’s something that just draws her in. When she leans to inspect the girl closer, who was more preoccupied with detangling her long locks that also double to cover her tits, Toph slaps her hand away. 

“What if this is just a crazy bitch who works at one of those aquariums who always wanted to fulfill every girl’s obligatory mermaid phase and inhaled too much chlorine for her brain cells to function?” Suki rips her hand out of Toph’s grasp. 

“Didn’t know humans were so _kind_ and welcoming,” She teases, flapping her tail to spray water at the duo. Her eyes filled with nothing but devious determination to make them _squirm_. 

“Toph, why would she want to come to _Ember fucking Island_ of all places and stay in a pool that I know hasn’t passed state insepctions for the last two years?” 

Toph gasps. “That was a _secret_.” She shrieks even louder when the mermaid picks up her foot and inspects the filthy thing, before Toph kicks her square in the face.

“I’ve always wanted to know what toes felt like,” she pouts, bending a splash of water straight at Toph’s face. 

She turns to Suki, smirking when she catches her _staring_. “You can touch it, you know.” When she pulls back her hand after initially making contact with it, Katara lets out a loud laugh. “Don’t be shy, touch it some more. It’s a little slimy, though.” Suki just gulps. Her eyes haven’t left the blue tail. It was gleaming, despite the yellow glare of their barely working light poles. 

“Funnily enough that’s the same thing I said to the guy I let finger my butt in a Cheesecake Factory.” While Suki reaches down to rub at the girl’s tail she takes a good, long look at her. 

She seemed to exemplify what all folklore say: mermaids were divine. She looked as much of a teenager with the upper half of her body, but was so incredibly _pretty_ . So pretty, as though she swam off the set of a Hollywood movie. The type of pretty that made you do a double take, makes you all dizzy and wondering if it was even possible or even _fair_ to share a universe with someone as stunning as she was. At first glance, she was everything you’ve ever heard or seen about mermaids. Her features were all delicate and she was beautiful, undeniably so. Yet, there was this inextinguishable _fire_ in her eyes that just made her features light up even more. 

It was familiar, and almost jolts her out of her seat when she recognizes it. Suki’s seen it in herself, in Toph, too. 

“You’re trying to escape, aren’t you?” She says without thinking, and slaps a hand over her mouth. The mermaid freezes, striking blue eyes nearly piercing through her own. 

It’s a feeling that all girls manage to share, half-fish or not. The world was just so cruel to girls. It takes years of mulling, years of getting used to processing and numbing the entirety of the pain, and understanding that it truly never gets easier. Each level of womanhood you unlock just becomes more difficult, more unforgiving. 

There’s rules, there’s lessons you painfully learn, with one ultimate truth waiting at the end of the tunnel: _nothing was ever fucking fair_. You’ll learn that at 13, when the worst thing a girl could be is ugly. You learn that at 30, when the worst thing a girl could be was a woman. 

While some were blessed with a premade manual in the form of an older sister who lets you swap lip glosses and mascaras, or a mother desperately holding onto their youth and allowing you to try ketamine in the back of their Toyota minivan, Suki and Toph were never quite that lucky. 

Yet, against all odds, they found each other. 

Rebellion. Box dye. Daily horoscope apps. The feeling of just wanting to crawl out of your skin and wonder _why_ . Why the world was so hard when you’re _just trying to be a girl_. And you try to escape in the little ways you can. You try to let yourself breathe, any way you can. 

For a moment in time, they managed to escape in a little world they had all to themselves. That’s what they don’t tell girls about love. When you find your best friend. It’s a love that happens only once in a lifetime. When you find someone who manages to just _get_ you. Who manages to love with no judgement, with no hesitation. 

As you grow older, the bubble seems to burst. Once your teenage years become memories of the past, you suddenly have to figure out all the codes and rules of womanhood, of adulthood. The little moments they got to just be girls were suddenly _over_ . People said it was ridiculous to hold onto the things that made girlhood so fun, instead _growing up_ just seemed like the best option, the only option. No more living out your days with your best girlfriend at your side. No more allowing yourself moments of reprieve. You have to learn how to belong in this society you could never quite crack, learn how to belong to someone on top of all of that. 

Katara never quite understood it. As a master waterbender in her tribe, she was too stubborn a girl for the men in her tribe or the Northern Tribe, too. Women in the villages warned her that she would never get married if she didn’t start figuring out the ladylike code of conduct. She happily defied them. 

She thought she was protected, being the daughter of the Chief. Living in blissful ignorance, she tried ignoring every singing lobster people sent her way, trying to woo her. Everywhere she went, she had to emphasize she was far too busy perfecting her craft, brushing up on her political knowledge by being her father’s right hand woman. 

And then of course, their sister tribe wanted to unify both tribes with a symbolic marriage. When Katara met the chain smoking merman (how he managed to get cigarettes to work underwater was beyond her), she wanted to rip off his dick and preserve it in an old jar of sea prunes as a _message_ right there and then. He was a brute, rough around the edges, and _entirely_ too ugly for trying to talk so loudly.

“Mermaids don’t marry for love.” Katara reveals, her voice barely above a whisper. “I ran away before anything could be finalized.” The girls are mesmerized by her waterbending technique, an intricate wave beckoning a stray gummy worm to her hand. 

“My dad and the Northern Tribe started the storm to try and find me and bring me back home with the current. But I didn’t—fuck. I _couldn’t_ go back.” Katara’s never left home, she never could leave her people. Yet, it was so fucking humiliating. When all she wanted to do was live her life doing as she pleases, helping how she could, and now she was being forced into spending her life being nothing more than a political pawn. 

It’s gut wrenching, a punishment some women wouldn’t wish upon their worst enemies. Womanhood made it normal to lose all the parts that made you, _you_. 

When she meets their eyes, the girls just hold each other’s hands. And she hopes—no, she’s sure they understand her. 

“I’m Katara.” 

//

“Suki, get your bitch ass up!” Toph kicks the girl next to her on the bed. She quickly throws on a large shirt and Suki rolls out of the bed and straight onto the floor, wiping whatever drool she had dribbling down her chin. 

She finds one of Toph’s old sweaters, and slips it on without a thought. When she wipes away the eye crust and meets her on the balcony, they can’t help but _laugh_. It was already unbearable warm, and every second they spent looking out to the blazing rays they could feel the salty air kiss their skin. 

“A fucking _mermaid_.” 

Toph holds back a scream. “Maybe my antidepressant’s hallucination side effect wasn’t just a _suggestion_.” 

“Yeah, I mean Prozac definitely—” Before Suki gets a chance to finish, she gasps. 

They run as fast as their flip flops could take them on the slippery faux-deck of the beach club. Toph pushes with all her might, and Iroh nearly flops over. 

“Toph! I thought those anger management classes—” 

“Why are you draining the pool?!” The two scream in unison. 

Iroh smiles the way all old people smile when they try to make young people feel better about ruining the economy and electing Ronald Reagan (Like that one TikTok goes, _“All of the birds died in 1986 due to Reagan killing them and replacing them with spies that are now watching us. The birds work for the bourgeoisie_.”) It was confused and a little condescending at the same time. “Your grandfather’s orders, Toph.” 

She’s about to start yelling like a man being forced to not use 3-in-1 shampoo, conditioner, bodywash, when her ears perk up. 

They quickly unlatch the supply shed and nearly meet their death when a neon yellow pool noodle comes smacking at their head. 

“Oh Rihanna above! It’s just you two,” Katara gasps, holding a hand to comfort her racing heart. “You scared the shrimp dick out of me!”

“How did you—” 

“With these!” Katara holds up her leg and wiggles her toes, stumbling into the various pool floaties in her haste. “I’ve never had the sea sack to try them like my brother does.” 

“And look, I even have one of these!” She turns around to shake her ass in their view. “Check this shit out! It’s so cute!” 

Toph smacks at Suki’s arms when she doesn’t move her head for an extended period of time. “Suki, stop staring!” 

“But it looks so perfect! Giving me real BBL vibes.” Toph slaps Suki on her forehead. Katara experimentally shakes her bare chest and Suki is equally as entranced. “ _Big boobs_?” 

Toph pinches the bridge of her nose. “Give her your sweater!” 

“But—” She only had her swimsuit underneath. Plus, her boobs were intent on defying her orders that day and she was sure would move away from their assigned seat and out of her top to play a game of peek-a-boob. 

“ _Suki_!” 

“You’re a clot in my artery, Toph.” Suki all but chucks the blue crewneck in Katara’s face. 

“At least you’re always thinking of me.” 

Of course, when she walks out, she’s managed to turn the dumpy thing into a halter dress after wrapping the long sleeves around her neck. It looked like it could have easily cost hundreds of VSCO girl dollars at Urban Outfitters. 

“I only shop Bloomingtails where I’m from,” Katara insists, shrugging. 

//

When the girls manage to sneak out the entire gummy worm supply out of Toph’s grandparents’ store, the mermaid happily feasts on the sweet treat, while jumping up and down on Toph’s bed. 

“So. Why. Are. You. Here?” Suki says, each word punctuated with a well-timed jump from Katara. She feels dizzy from following Katara's repeated bouncing on the mattress with her head. 

“I fucking _love_ legs!” Katara ignores the girl’s question altogether. Katara never quite had the chance to just _have fun_. She was always uptight and had a stick up her tail for as long as she could remember. Now, with no one from her old life to scrutinize her every move, she was deadset on doing whatever the fuck she wanted. 

“You didn’t have to give up your voice for a pair of those?” 

Katara rolls her eyes. “Are you mermaidsplaining me?” 

Toph opens her mouth to try to challenge the girl before Suki shoves a gummy worm in her mouth to placate her.

“I only get to have legs during the day. If I get any water on them, it’s a tail of two titties and a mermaid exposed to the human population. Then, I’d have to kill everyone within 25 miles." She tears through a sour gummy worm enthusiastically and giggles when the tangy taste electrifies her tongue. 

“Look what I can do!” She bounces a few more times as the girls stare at her, slightly horrified at her nonchalance at the thought of _murder_. She lands square on her ass, and sticks out her leg. 

Toph chokes. “Gross! We touched feet!” She gags. “You know, I wasn’t going to acknowledge it, but _what the fuck bitch_!” 

Katara laughs deviously. “Well I was!” 

Suki flops back on the bed, eyeing the two girls curiously. “How adorable! Instead of holding hands you guys held toes!” 

“They _brushed_ , they didn't interlock!” Toph emphasizes, waving around her hands wildly. 

Suki holds up both hands. “I’m not judging, love is love!”

“Fuck _you_.” 

Katara just pokes the girl again with her toes. “You’re so flustered! It's just toes! Don't be shy, hold toes!” 

Before Toph could get in another word, the shell decoration she stole from her grandparents’ shop starts lighting up bright blue and _vibrating_. 

“Is that a—” 

“Shellphone?” Katara sighs, exasperated. “Yeah, it’s a real thing.” She sends the girls a pleading look and they move out to the balcony to give her privacy. As her screaming becomes louder, and a muffled voice on the end of the line just starts shrieking, the sunny day turns into complete darkness and thunder rolls above their heads. Only when Katara slams the conch on the nightstand did everything immediately return to normal. 

“He woke up on the wrong side of the coral didn’t he?” Suki teases, and Katara lets out a dry laugh, clearly distracted and picking at the pieces balcony’s wooden railing without a thought. Something catches her eyes, though, and she immediately starts running. Suki looks down to where she was hyper focused on, and blinks her eyes a few more times when she sees Katara running the same direction as _him_. 

//

Unfortunately, it was an almost regular occurrence. A girl storming up to him, screaming incoherently wasn’t _unusual_ persay. Usually, it was revolving around the cost of Plan B and his Venmo not connecting to his bank account and whatnot. But he swears he would remember a girl as beautiful as her, and he’s sure he would remember what he did to make her pretty features screw up into something so _lethal_. 

She’s halfway into chewing into him as he washes out the sand from his hair and feet and trying to clear his ears of seawater fast enough to catch whatever she was saying at the beach’s showers. When she takes a step closer to him, it’s automatic. 

She opens her eyes, hands out, ready to meet the unforgiving ground when she just feels warmth encircling her. 

He catches her without a thought, and he forgets how to speak when she parts her lips and blinks wildly with those big eyes. Looking like a painting that’s escaped its frame and come to life. 

He wants to ask her name, her favorite movie, her willingness to forgive him for however he fucked up just so he could stare at her for maybe a beat longer if she didn’t slap him first, but she immediately leaps out of his grasp. A flush prickling her cheeks. 

“Zuko! Hurry the fuck up!” Chan screams from his jeep, and Zuko takes a second too long to look away from her to nod at the guy. 

“See you around?” He flashes his best coochie tingling smile. To his surprise, she just recoils. 

“What the fuck was that?” Suki screeches, once her and Toph catch up. Katara numbly fumbles into a hammock, squeezing her eyes shut. 

She all but ignores the girls, much too preoccupied with formulating the barest semblance of a plan. “How do I get _him_ to want me?” 

“You go to therapy and then reevaluate your life goals.” Suki smacks Toph so hard on the head, she swears her extensions shifted in their place. “What? Loving a man in public is _humiliating_.” 

“The only way you can get a man to love you is if you change your name to PlayStation 5.” Suki sighs. “Bigger picture, Katara _what_ is going on? Why do you even want _Zuko_ to like you?” 

“You have to help me.” She immediately sits upright, and stumbles a little when the hammock nearly folds under her. 

“You’re kind of a bitch. I don’t want to help you, hoe!” Toph reminds, ducking expertly out of Suki’s grasp. 

“Help a mermaid, and you get a wish. Anything your heart desires.” She mulls it over. “Except anything to do with Chris Brown. We hate him down there, too.” 

The duo pause. 

“ _Any_ wish?” Toph’s lip almost trembles. 

Suki clucks her tongue, raising her brows at Katara’s pleading eyes. “I’ll bite. What is going on? What the fuck do you need to do to Zuko?” 

Katara takes a breath.

“I have to make him fall in love with me.” The girls’ eyes grow wide. “Or else, I have to kill him.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part 2 will be up by wednesday and if it's not I give u full permission to steal one of my fenty glosses and/or punch me in the tit 
> 
> give me ur best mermaid pick up lines pretty please me and katara want to blush hehe
> 
> title based off of "do it" by chloe x halle <3


	2. dick guillotine vibes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is ur name katara bc I think we were mermaid for each other :( <3

“Kill him, bitch!”

“ _Toph_!” Suki screams. “We cannot kill Zuko!” She sighs when the girl all but ignores her. “Also, stop doing the cha-cha-slide while you plot to murder a man. It’s unbecoming.” 

Toph pouts. She was _not_ in the mood to be chastised, especially not when it was so hot she wished it was possible to put her sweaty tits in a ponytail. “If the world didn’t want us coming together and castrating a few penises, they shouldn’t have made so many female empowering, early 2000s Barbie films.” 

Suki facepalms while Toph excitedly grabs Katara’s hands. The mermaid’s face instantly lights up. 

“Suki, c’mon! Toph sees the vision!” She immediately winces after letting the words slip, and Toph doesn’t hesitate to smack her arm. “Let’s face it. Murder is much easier than falling in love!” 

Suki digs in her bikini top for her sweat laden iPhone 7 with a crack across the middle as big as Sonic the Hedgehog’s penis. She quickly flashes Katara a picture of Zuko in _the_ Asian fuckboy uniform: a Kobe Bryant Jersey thrown over a black hoodie, white Nike Air Force 1s with _no_ creases, and a bong that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since the Obama administration. “How could you kill a face like this?” 

Katara just stares blankly back at her. “Yeah, I’m killing him. It's settled!” She excitedly claps her hands together, sharpening an icicle out of a spilled Corona lite nearby them. She gets out of the hammock to plant a hug on Toph, who promptly shoves her away. 

“No, it’s not!” Suki protests, stomping a flip-flop clad foot on the rickety wooden porch. 

“But it just sounds so fun, teaming up to kill a man!” Katara protests.

“Yeah, Suki! Besides, all men do is hide quarters in their foreskin,” Toph huffs. “There comes a time where every woman needs to reenact the ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’ music video and kill a man while wearing designer femme fatale fits.” 

“Are you even listening to yourself right now?” Toph sticks a brazen tongue out. “So in order to get our wish, you want us to team up with a fucking _mermaid_ to kill Zuko?”

“Exactly!” Toph exclaims. “Preferably in a Tom Ford, Fall 2015 denim coat after shimmering up our tits up with Fenty’s Diamond Bomb Highlighter.”

“Toph!” Suki screeches, trying to ignore Katara continuing to make knives out of nearby mother’s abandoned breast milk. 

“Well, do you have a better plan, bitch?” 

Suki struggles, scowling as she tries formulating _anything_ right in that moment _._

Toph is far too happy at her silence, even going as far to do a celebratory jig only gremlins (people under 5’7”) were capable of. “She can’t make him fall in love with her! He’s _way_ too cool now. I heard girls send free pussy pics to him and someone even spent this entire summer trying to fix the McDonald’s ice cream machine just to buy him a Nintendo Switch!” 

Suki makes a move to protest, before shutting her mouth and just pinching her nose bridge in frustration. “I know you’re talking about me. For the record, I worked there for only _two weeks_.” 

“How could I forget? You got fired for clogging up three toilets in one day, sang to your manager _da da da da da! I’m lovin’ it!_ While pointing to the hairy vulva you drew on Ronald McDonald, and then stole me a Double Filet-O-Fish.” 

Suki pressed a finger to her forehead’s throbbing vein. “Big Mac, bourgeoisie. Sounded the same to me. Not my fault someone let these rich bitches charge $5.79 for a mediocre fried fish sandwich.” Suki sighs, “Anyways, that was uncalled for, Toph.” 

“Fuck you, cum cavern!” 

Toph could immediately sense Suki’s hand twitch with the urge to just rip off her earrings and start fighting her right there and then. She doesn’t, of course. Not because she has a hold on her penchant for violence, or say, cared about her friend. She was a _fake bitch_ on a normal basis, but even more so in front of a mystical sea creature. Mermaids before hoes, you know the drill. 

“You just want to kill him because you don’t want to redistribute Zuko penis!” Suki’s voice becomes grating, and Toph’s sensitive teeth bristles at the incredulous pitch she achieves. Sensodyne Pronamel Toothpaste when the world needed you most, you vanished.

“Perhaps!” Toph’s nose is high in the air, eyes fluttering shut and arms crossing indignantly. “If I can’t have him, no one can! Zuko’s penis is _mine_!”

“And so your solution is to let a _mermaid_ kill him?” Suki raises a brow. 

“Oh my _Rihanna!_ _Yes!_ ” She shakes the taller girl back and forth by her shoulders. “What the fuck is not clicking?” 

“Don’t you _dare_ say the Lord’s name in vain!” Suki exclaims. She turns to the mermaid avidly watching a little kid shove sand up their nostrils while trying to rub at the heartburn building up and prodding at her chest.

“Katara, why the fuck do you even need to kill him in the first place?” 

“That’s, um! None of your business!” She fiddles with her hair nervously, avoiding eye contact. 

“Let’s see, when I can potentially go to prison again, maybe! Just _maybe_ it should be my business.” 

Katara pauses. “What do you mean again—”

“That’s not important!” Suki quickly interjects. “As much as I want to help, my probation officer and I are hoping I won’t willingly catch a charge _again_. We can’t just murder a guy without a good reason!” 

Katara laughs, bitter and hollow. The girls nervously make eye contact when the enthusiastic lilt of her voice evaporates into thin air. “He is _Prince Zuko_ , isn’t he? Heir apparent to Azulon Corporations?” 

The air around them seems to vanish. Suki and Toph’s mouths dropped open, and any words that they could muster easily died on their tongues. 

The world was trying its best to forget. When Azulon Corporations seemingly dominated every industry. Ozai transformed the dwindling family business to the most successful company the world has seen. Electric cars, virtual reality furry porn goggles, life-like _My Little Pony_ dolls that read the news to bronies every morning. With any new technological advancements in the market, Ozai managed to be on top of it. 

His life looked like the plot of a movie that loud, ugly men and Quentin Tarintino jerked off to. Dirty Hanes sock and CeraVe lotion at the ready to nut to sounds of misogyny and gunshots. His Wednesdays consisted of jet setting on a private plane to snort cocaine off the Motiva breast implants of pretty girls galore. 

He practically had the world in the palm of his hands, clutching it by the balls. 

_Was it more than a pyramid scheme your high school’s cheerleaders turned bitter moms wearing Kohl’s Jennifer Lopez Collection tried getting you to join?: Ozai and Azulon Corporations have swindled billions!_

Behind a $3.99 a month paywall was the article of the century, a collaboration project between journalists in every nation. Their piece was fueled by the hundreds of thousands of documents leaked to their work emails, files arriving in a .zip folder hidden behind the script of a Fire Nation drama. 

Photos, video recordings of meetings, undeniable proof of drug trafficking, illegal dumping of toxic waste in the oceans, aiding in hiding another Martha Stewart securities fraud case, you name it. The chaos that ensued was momentous. 

One of the largest companies in the world was abruptly rendered obsolete. Ozai was promptly thrown in prison, nothing but a toothbrush shiv pointed in his face by his patiently waiting cellmate, whose wife invested millions in Azulon the year prior. 

It was cruel, though. Even with some semblance of justice coming from him rotting behind bars, he still fucked up the rest of the world for years to come. Breaking it down to fragile pieces everyone was trying to put back together without cutting themselves. 

Katara tries to forget it, too. She can’t, though. Her people can’t. Sometimes, it was easier to remember when her world used to shine so bright. When she wasn’t so _angry_ , when her people weren’t bitter and vengeful enough to want to kill a son for his father’s wrongdoings. 

“He’s different now!” Sokka insisted, looking as passionate as the time he tried convincing the Council to kill any racist who questioned Halle Bailey’s casting in _The Little Mermaid_ remake. (He is possibly still bitter they did not let him audition for the riveting role of Singing Lobster #5.) 

While the Northern Tribe had no problem disguising themselves as humans in order to gather insight on the other nations, the Southern Tribe was scared shitless. No one but Katara could manipulate the currents, making it easier than ever to revert back to fish-dick state after your legs make contact with the water. Suprisingly, mass murder after accidentally revealing yourself as a mermaid is a hard clean up job. Even if you hire the right contractors a femur always gets found somehow. 

Then again, Sokka was never a knees to the chest, pussy to the wind type of person. No, he was so offended and appalled, even his penis was perturbed. He up and refused to be left behind while the men in the Northern Tribe were allowed to wash up on shore on a nearly daily basis. The last (metal) straw was when a mer-manchild swam to the South just to taunt him. 

“You’re being _stupid_ stupid!” Katara shrieks while he packs his good stabbing knife. 

Sokka petulantly crosses his arms over his chest. “Well, is it really my fault he decided to spoil _Breaking Dawn_ for me and I am now nothing but a shell of a man? I really wanted Bella to fuck the wolf!” Sokka was always fascinated by the human world, sneaking glimpses through the living room window of a cabin near the shore, whose owners’ teenage daughter was going through her own mandated YA-fiction-depicting toxic-glorified-relationships-with-a-white-man-phase. He wanted to go through that phase, too. Sue him for following along with her daily _Twilight_ rewatches. 

“Bitch, it’s been out since _2011_!” Katara was just as tired as Robert Pattinson hearing about some CGI troll baby and Sokka humming the soundtrack while pretending Edward just took a whiff of his scent. 

Sokka throws his hands up in the water. “Pain is temporary. Team Jacob is forever.” 

He spent the entirety of a month on land, coming back right at sunset when the universe swapped his legs for a tail. At the beginning, he convinced the elders that it would benefit the Southern government to observe human behavior. Katara quickly figured it out, though. Especially when he came back most nights with his breath smelling like pussy and mimosa. 

It was really a predisposition that ran in the family, like high cholesterol or bad taste in men. When they fell, they fell hard. People, things, emotions, all things they fell for hook, line, and sinker. It was a nasty habit he never managed to kick, no matter how hard he tried. 

Frankly? He liked being on land because he liked being whore. After all, whores are what make the world go round. 

But the main reason he was always too eager to get back to the shore? He had a _crush_. No, not on the fat, wet pussy lips of the pretty girl that he helped with her mom’s ocean cleanup project. 

“He’s so _dreamy_.” 

“I swear on Poseidon's prostate, shut up!” She bent a lobster’s feces close to her brother’s face, who swats it away still entranced by the framed photo he stole of _him_. Katara couldn’t believe her eyes. 

As the manager of the _Convince Katara that Sokka is Cool_ campaign since she popped out of a cooch, Sokka thought him being a warrior, her partner in crime in rebuilding the Southern Mermaid Tribe, and hell, having the burden of being the oldest ethnic child would qualify as cool in her book. And here he was, throwing the life-long campaign over a man-crush on _Zuko_. 

“And he’s pretty, and has all these cool swords, and just so _cool_ and—”

“ _And he’s mysterious and generous and let me smoke his good kush and didn’t mind that I choked and lied and said I had asthma and then even gave me a little kiss kiss on the tippity top of my penis too_ !” Katara mocks, volume growing and hair poking every which way from tugging at the strands until Sokka’s shrinking under her wide, erratic eyes. She was _tired_ of hearing about him. 

“Don’t make me make myself an only child.” 

Katara guffaws. “ _I’m so scared_ ,” she bites out, rolling her eyes. “Why are you lying to yourself? People don’t change. They are who they are at their core. There’s no reversing that.”

At night, when Sokka’s busy doing a one man interpretation of _Breaking Dawn: Part 2_ ’s battle dream scene, she helps him “clean.” 

And by “clean,” she means rifle through his things.

She wasn’t about to let her brother be right about anything. The concept of men ever being capable enough to do anything but hunting, or opening a jar, was too hard to comprehend. So she digs up and reads through whatever documents he managed to seal and bring back to the seven seas. She just couldn’t understand _why_. Poised as the next in line to the family business, Zuko disappearing as it burnt to the ground didn’t make sense. Taking Sokka along to help him clean up the same oceans his father polluted in the first place didn’t make sense. 

The Council of Elders didn’t understand it either. 

“Why would a son defy his father with such keen alacrity?” She always despised the joint council meetings. Partially because it smelled like old bitch, mainly because the Northern Council members were always so stick-up-the-ass like and used big, fancy words that only seemed to punctuate their decaying gums. Like really, who are you trying to impress? The College Board on the SAT? 

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because he fucking sucks!” For once, Katara wishes Sokka would be anything but... _Sokka_. 

But because he’s her brother and she like, _loved him or whatever_ , she stands firm with him, too. “We can’t kill him!” As much as she was sure she despised Ozai, and wasn’t sure she liked Zuko, it just didn’t feel right. 

Normally, the Southern Council feared her. Yet, every member had suddenly grown a set of ovaries overnight and voted in favor of it. 

“He helped take down his father’s company! The same company that polluted our tribes’ waters!” Sokka protests, and no one looks entirely convinced. 

“Seize the land sympathizer!” A member yells, pointing an arthritis-wracked finger in Sokka’s general direction. 

“You can seize deez nuts!” He tried swimming away, but was promptly trapped by their armored guards. 

“Give me one _very_ good reason why we shouldn’t kill Zuko.” Another Northern Council member created a whirlpool whipping Sokka face-to-face with him. “Maybe we’ll spare your life, too.” Sokka wracked his brain, trying to think under the pressure of having harpoons pointed in his face and someone’s breath smelling like Pedialyte right up against him. 

He does the most automatic thing, turning to the one person he could trust most. 

“Katara!” She’s momentarily distracted from her fighting stance. “She’s in love with Zuko!” 

The palace grows silent. 

Her mouth drops open. “Bitch, come again?” 

Katara had always been a stubborn thing. Too loud, too brash, too much. At first glance, she knew it was easy to not take her seriously. And even when she tried over and over again to prove herself, she was always doing _something_ wrong. Someone had an issue with her bending style, someone else had a problem with her comments on the tribe’s budget. She simultaneously had to be a princess and a warrior and a politician all in one. There wasn’t room to be anything but concentrated, serious, _perfect_. She closed herself off, refusing to give anyone an opportunity to doubt her nation or her abilities.

In turn, she remained dead set on ignoring every attempt to wed her off to someone in their tribe. The Southern council began losing their resolve. They’ve long since put her file aside, especially after she (potentially) caused someone to lose a thumb the time they tried forcing her to actually learn the names of visiting male waterbenders from the North instead of referring to each of them as _Dolphin Testicle_. 

Yet, they couldn’t pass up the chance at reuniting with the North. Even if it meant having to stop the sought after princess from yelling “Deuces!” and then proceeding to flip off any proffered suitor. She flat out refused to sign for a caterer, or even try on her wedding tail. Regardless, the Council began scrambling to shell out sand dollars for the kelp and coral centerpieces after drafting up contracts with their sister tribe. 

Underneath it all, underneath all the labels that seemed to define her, Katara was a _girl_ , wanting, hoping life as they knew it could be different. A girl who clung onto stories of love and hope no matter how easily they could slip through her fingers and drown in reality. 

The girls wound up walking alongside the shore. Suki insisted, after seeing the storm brewing beneath Katara’s crystalline eyes. “I don’t know. For once in my life, I wanted to swim on my own tail. Do something _I fucking wanted_ for a change. I guess—I guess I always wanted to wait to fall in love before I got married. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?” She lets out a quiet laugh. “I wouldn’t know. We don’t have it back home.” 

“You don’t have love?” Suki questions in disbelief. 

Katara fervently shakes her head. Marriages were planned out years before. It was all strategic and calculated and was as sincere as Doja Cat’s apology for shaking ass cheeks for racists. “We marry who the council picks. Everyone says it’s a myth. ” 

“But how do you know it exists?” Toph asks, settling in the sand when it gets too hot to step on, and rests her feet on a sandcastle bucket nearby. 

Her whole life Katara was told love was a curse disguised as a blessing. And yet, she felt it every day during her childhood. Sweet kisses, hushed whispers, identical blushes even decades into her parents’ marriage that made Sokka and her want to vomit and swoon at the same time. 

She still believes in it, even if she could still feel her heart yearn for her mom, cracking no matter how hard she’s spent the last few years trying to mend it back to life. She used to never let the council’s comments get to her head, never having the time to let anything cut through through the fortress she’s painstakingly built her entire life. 

Her resolve only started breaking when she saw the light in Sokka’s eyes give out, too. 

After Yue. 

“Is it wrong for me to keep believing it’s still real?” Her voice wavers. She knew it was foolish, thinking she could just keep holding onto the pieces of a feeling that brought her more pain than it was worth. Reaching to thumb at her necklace out of habit, she gasps. 

It was gone.

Shoving it to the back of her mind, Katara takes a breath to calm herself. 

With a flick of her hand, the tide begins to ebb back and forth. She almost lets her feet touch the waves splashing around her. They were tempting her to take the easy route and _go home_. Then again, she was never the type to give up easily. She had her brother to protect (and maybe her heart, too). 

“Trust. You will be dealt with,” she hisses in Sokka’s ear. The Council and their father were scandalized. 

In turn, Sokka drowned their sister tribe in paperwork for Katara’s wedding to buy her time. She knew she didn’t have much to work with, and she had to avoid the ocean lest the Northern benders draw her back in. 

“I can get out of my wedding only if I make _Zuko_ fall in love with me.” She spits his name out as thought it was a bitter shot of alcohol, burning her mouth. “Or else I have to kill him.” 

She freezes a shallow pool of water collected in a kid’s sand pit in her haste. “If I can’t do either, they kill him themselves.” 

Suki rubs at her temples. “Rihanna, help us all.” 

“Who the fuck am I kidding?” Katara cries, tugging at her hair dampened with salt lingering in the air. “Maybe I’m in over my head! I can’t kill someone!”

“Uh, yeah you can!” Suki sends Toph a look. “What? Just trying to get her to tap into her inner #GirlBoss.” 

Suki shoves Toph headfirst into the grains of sand.

Toph purses her lips, rubbing at her chin in concentration. “You’re still young, Katara! Who cares about love?” She gets up to shove her buttocks in the mermaid’s face, who just laughs in disbelief. “Did you hear what the fuck I said? Shake some ass!”

“Every night, I go to bed praying you come down with a case of anal polyps,” Suki mumurs. 

Toph gasps when something, or rather, _someone_ catches her eye. “Katara, if you really want to declare a war against Zuko’s schlong,” she says, knees cracking as she gets up. “Let’s just do it now.” 

“ _What_?!” The girls screech when Toph runs off, bare feet slapping the sand. 

“Katara, wait!” Suki screeches. “You need undies! Your cooch juice is slinging everywhere!” 

She couldn’t stop Toph or Katara. Not when they were that determined. Not when they were running as fast as the time Britney Spears claimed she outran Usain Bolt’s record (Believe women <3).

It was almost like slow motion, the disaster Suki could already see playing out. She easily recognized the Home Depot canopy set up nearby a smattering of lowered Lexuses and Honda Civics with Waifu stickers, the smell of trust funds being squandered on Supreme bucket hats and laced percocets. 

“Katara, wait!” Suki finds Toph and Katara deep in thought, hiding behind Zuko’s Lexus IS250 and drawing in the sand various scenarios of his penis falling off. “So you guys are just going to camp out behind his car and just wait for him to come back? And then what? Slice his testicle open with an icicle?” 

“...Yes!” Katara hesitates, and hates the smirk Suki sends her. She knew she was running on pure emotion alone. Not thinking things entirely through, not thinking of the consequences. She felt like _Sokka_. Her eye immediately twitches at the thought. 

“Stop being a bitch!” Toph yells back. 

Suki scoffs, crossing her arms and trying her best to look intimidating. “A bitch is just a female version of a hustler!”

Toph laughs humorlessly, spitting out an imaginary piece of gum she was chewing on for the dramatic effect. “First of all, you just quoted Beyoncé wrong and you should be guillotined _on sight_ for that alone. No, _Katara that was not a set up for blind jokes_.” 

“You’re no fun!” Katara sighs. 

Toph pretends to inspect her nails. “Second, a bitch is just a female version of a stupid bitch. We have to kill him.” Before she could make a dig at what she could sense was Suki’s flaking liquid lipstick that made her look like a white British influencer, she froze. 

“Can I help you guys?” He coughs, taking a hit from his juul. 

The girls nearly gasp. When they’ve listened to his voice recorded on a voice memo enough times for it to lull them to sleep, and/or have it set as their alarm, their pussies recognized and salivated over it like a Pavlov Dog. 

What? It wasn’t their fault his voice was hot enough to make them want to tattoo his name on their clit. 

Toph could hear their assholes clenching. “Uh oh, spaghettios.” 

“Maybe it’s _Jurassic Park_ T-Rex rules. If we don’t move, maybe he can’t see us,” Suki whisper-screams. Zuko awkwardly coughs after about a minute of them just continuing to duck behind his car and refusing to turn around and acknowledge his presence. 

Throwing all caution to the wind, Suki and Toph immediately begin crab walking away without looking back. They let out a breath of relief when they find shelter behind a fragile child’s misshapen sandcastle as he takes a hit from his inhaler. 

“Katara, I cannot believe—” They begin, trailing off when it dawned on them she was still rooted in her spot. 

“Excuse me, I don’t think this is your Lexus. My Danny Devito body pillow is in the backseat,” Zuko tries, when the girl in front of him wouldn’t budge. She didn’t respond, standing there as frozen as a nipple in the Arctic.

There was as much space between them as the enlarged gums of every white girl perpetually engaged to an army cadet. So why did she feel the burn of his gaze imprinting onto her back?

His eyes widened. A girl willingly meeting him in person and standing in front of his car but _not_ damaging it a la Carrie Underwood or a la _Glee_ when Mercedes thought Kurt was in love with Rachel so she broke his windshield to the tune of a catchy musical number? It could only mean one thing. 

Fuck! Did someone give him crabs _again_? 

“Hey, you good?” His voice is trying its best at being gentle. There’s still the slightest bit of a rough edge from the coughing fit that seized his throat just moments prior. He tries his best to keep his nerves down, in case the pubic lice were watching his every move, and takes another hit from the juul. 

Katara gulps. She doesn’t know what takes over her. She was _nervous_. The type of nervous that made her mouth all dry and her palms sweaty and her face grow hot. It was his fault, really. For crowding her space, trying to get a good look at her. 

A gentle nudge became a repeated poke that became a “Hey, if I got public lice again can you please just let me know? Here, I’ll go and buy us some lice lotion and we can take turns rubbing it into each other’s crotches.” 

Maybe it was because she was overwhelmed and jumpy and from the corner of her eye she could see his arm littered with tattoos that just made her pussy pulsate. She squeezes her eyes shut, mustering just a bit of courage. 

“Ma’am, this nicotine dependency is a bitch, I really need my juul pod. Could you just—”

Her hand assumes a near perfect form for a patented _bitch slap_ . “Once. A. Colonizer. Always. A. Colonizer!” She announces loudly, punctuating each word with a _smack_. 

“Whew!” She breathes out. She was fully prepared, her arms outstretched in mastered positions to bend water to her will and murder him. 

“What _in the name of Jada Smith’s entanglement just happened_?” He hisses. While she expected him to live up to Sokka’s long-winded tales of Zuko being some sort of pussy magnet because he knew how to fight, she is instead met with him screaming louder than a teenager learning how to parallel park and then hitting a squirrel with their ethnic dad in the passenger seat. 

Everyone around them was either too high or too occupied with trying TikTok’s green screen effect to notice Zuko getting his flat ass handed to him by a five foot nothing girl. He wants to cry, his eyes squeezing shut with tears of pain streaming down. Meanwhile, his hands work quickly to blindly find a spare Hennessy bottle to press against his stinging face and cool the fiery skin. 

Katara gasps. She’s been face-to-face with pure _evil_. Seen the look of a monster, etched it into her memory until anger and rage pricked and punctured her heart. 

Faces like that were easy to recognize.

Yet, all she sees when she looks into Zuko’s eyes is just a _boy_. 

A boy she just slapped the shit out of until all he saw were stars and Rihanna singing “Pon De Replay” in her cameo in the direct-to-DVD _Bring It On: All or Nothing_. 

“ _Shit shit shit shit shit!_ ” She exhales loudly, looking up in hopes the brilliant blue sky would suck her in and take her out of her misery because she would rather die than ever hear Sokka say ‘I told you so.’ 

“Wrong person?” She laughs hesitantly while attempting to tiptoe away, folding her arms to her chest and trying to look as small as possible as she sets her gaze to the ground. That was, until she’s met with solid muscle, and slowly scans her eyes up to see a face reddened with rage. 

“Are you fucking crazy!” The man-child screams, spittle landing in Katara’s eye. She wipes it away, but she’s undeterred. Setting her features into a well patented look that makes his muscular frame shrink with fear. 

Before she could get a word in, Toph’s pushing her as hard as she could from behind, away from the potential for mermaid mass murder. “Suck a toe, Chan!” 

The boy glares down at the petite girl, scowling his hardest despite the fact his glare resembled more of an irritable bowel after a Spicy Popeye’s Chicken Sandwich. “Can someone escort this elderly Asian woman off the premises?” He screams to no one in particular. 

“She went to highschool with you, dick bag!” Suki yelps, holding down an erratic Katara trying to escape Suki’s firm grip on her arms. God, her arms were as solid as a Beverly Hills Housewife’s forehead botox.

“Those smile lines say otherwise.” 

“I can take him!” Katara urged, escaping for the fraction of the second Suki loosens her grip when she feels her underwear get gobbled up by her cameltoe, and shifts to adjust its position. The girls just _knew_ to run when they hear the sounds of Chan’s grunts of pain before they see Katara tugging at his nipple hairs hard enough to tear the follicles out by the root. 

After everyone manages to scramble to run a safe distance away from the hypebeast beach gathering, Suki lets out a breath of relief. 

“That was fucking _insane_!” Suki cries, plopping in the sand. 

“I changed my mind.” Katara swipes at a stray curl dyed blue from how long she’s been out of the water. “We’re _not_ killing him.” 

“ _Bitch, come again?_!” The duo scream, heads jolting in unison. 

“You know, trying to find reliable sea creatures to clean up stray brain tissue after a murder is a lot harder than you’d expect.” Katara tries convincing herself. Even if she’d never admit it, she had a hunch. She's sure her gut feeling was more than Jamie Lee Curtis cursing her after she ate an Activia yogurt cup floating at the bottom of Toph’s pool. 

“If you guys are still up for getting your wish?” She smiles nervously, eyes darting between Suki’s and Toph’s pensive stares. 

They consider it wordlessly, a conversation seemingly being had between nothing but squints and erratic hand movements. “Giving up Zuko? That’s the biggest sacrifice I’ve had to make since the time I hid a bag of weed up my ass when the school inspected Toph’s locker,” Suki reminisces, even letting a content sigh. 

Toph giggles, landing a playful punch to her arm.  
  


“Good times, ass grass.” Toph’s smiling until her face is sore. The miracle they pleaded Robin Fenty herself for was just a fake Gucci belt and a mermaid tail away. She turns to Katara with a determined look. They weren’t letting an opportunity like this slip through their fingers on porpoise. “You’re on, fish bitch.”

It knocks Katara straight off her feet, when they gather her into a sweaty group hug, and their smiles become contagious enough to be dangerous. 

//

“Fuck!” Suki yelps, Toph causing the fish tank tipping over on her brand new crop top. She digs through the boxes that scatter about her room in search of any clothes that weren’t wrinkled or smelled like a homeschooled kid’s bathroom from laying in boxes for so long. 

“How many times do I have to tell you? I really don’t think you have the knee capabilities for someone to automatically start singing ‘ _somebody come get her, she’s dancing like a stripper_ ’ when you start dancing. And it’s ok! That life isn’t made for everyone, you know.” 

“You’ve always been a hater,” Toph spits out, wobbling knees still bent with determination. “You never just let my pussy pop severely, do you?” 

Suki keeps furiously digging through the boxes. “I have to keep you in your place. _She’s_ always watching.” 

“Who?” 

“Her.” 

Toph gently hits her head against Suki’s bunk bed ladder. “I know you did not just point to the framed picture of Megan Thee Stallion on your nightstand.” 

“I did,” Suki sniffs, chucking her soaked top at Toph’s direction. Katara interferes just in time, bending water out of the top and wringing it completely dry before letting it hit Toph square in the face. 

“What’s your mother’s name again? Margaret Thee Pony?” Katara furiously begins typing on the iPad Toph quickly grabbed from her house on the way to Suki’s. She was actively trying to ignore her grandparents getting their fuck on at 1 in the afternoon. It was nice being a trust fund kid sometimes. Especially when being an abandoned, mistake child gets you a few Apple Watches to compensate for your parents’ emotional neglect. 

“ _Be nice_ ,” Katara whispers to the goldfish, who, much like men, are useless, high maintenance, smell like a mayonnaise and Nair, and really don’t provide benefits to your life besides being an appealing thought. 

“What did those bitches say about me?” Toph demands. 

Katara winces. “ _Nothing_ ! Nothing at all!” She ignores the jeers from the fish’s side. “They absolutely did _not_ say anything about your unblended extensions.” 

Toph pins her with a knowing stare that doesn’t phase her as much as she liked. “Look here, Cuntara!” 

“Hey!” Katara protests. “I’m just being honest!” 

Her lip curls. “Maybe I wanted you to lie to me!” Toph exasperates. 

Katara’s already prepared, doing a jabbing motion with her finger that was practically the universal motion for throwing hands. 

While the girls begin to scream about two PetSmart fish she bought for maybe two dollars, Suki was making quick work of undoing the progress her mom most likely spent the past few hours, hell maybe even days doing. Her heart and head and hands hurt tearing through the boxes. Seeing the life she had for the last few years packed up in neat boxes, as if her mom wasn’t guilty, or in the least bit _remorseful_ was something else. 

Even as a toddler barely learning to shit on her own, she knew nothing in life was permanent. Not her friends, not even her father. No matter the promises they made. She’s always been on her own. 

And then came Toph. 

Quickly, she takes the framed picture of them at a taekwondo tournament and gently sets it back on her desk. The exact spot had a dust imprint practically waiting for it to return. 

Her mom always said she came out of the womb mature enough for menopause. Suki’s always been the type to figure things out on her own. The type of kid to forge her mom’s signature because when she came back from lecturing, she was always too tired to care about an aquarium field trip. Like every Asian daughter has to do with their mom going through a midlife crisis, she provides free therapy sessions and talks her mom down from wanting to pierce a nipple after seeing a tit begin to droop, or marrying a white man with an Asian fetish out of pure loneliness. _Fuck_ , she even applied to the university in the Earth Nation, the same one her mom requested a grant from to continue her research just because she asked her to. 

Katara gets up to where Suki stands, looking at the few shelves her mom hasn’t had the chance to pack yet. 

“That’s my mom,” she points to a picture from a recent fundraiser. She runs her a gentle hand to her mom’s myriad of accolades, and a framed fish skeleton Katara sends a quick prayer for. “I’d get free tuition because of her new project’s grant.” 

She picks up some of her mom’s old papers laying about. As accomplished as she was, she was a messy bitch through and through. Then again, those usually go hand in hand. While her mother has tried to pull her own weight in packing up their home, she puts the adult acne medication with the black clothes directly in the sun and causes the bottles to leak and bleach said clothes and it was just a mess Suki knew she’d have to figure out when she wasn’t busy helping a mermaid. 

Katara follows her lead, and sifts through the few documents and studies strewn in the haphazard cleanup attempt. “I should thank her, you know.” Katara tries with a gentle smile. “Think she’s the reason the water’s been tasting less like an earring backing.”

“Yeah?” Suki mulls the thoughts over, picking up a few papers with intricately drawn sea creature observations. Even if they weren’t on speaking terms, it doesn’t mean she wasn’t _proud_. 

“Yeah.” Katara nods. Her eyes widen when she picks up a frame from the ground. 

Suki identifies that look easily. Zuko’s spell on pussy was a universal experience. “He was one of her research assistants.” Suki locates the boy in the photo, tapping on his head a few times with a nail she cut too short. 

Katara rolls her eyes and snorts. “So what? He picked up a few discarded vape pens, big whoop!” When she puts the frame in its designated box, the folder it was resting on catches her eye. Drawn on the front was what seemed like a blue and white figure. 

“Coming from a Zuko Watching™ background, that’s one of his favorite Fire Nation dramas.” Suki picks up the folder and plops it into a box. “ _The Blue Spirit_.” 

Katara barely catches herself gasping for air. “Are you—”

“Here!” Toph hands off the Apple device to Katara’s unassuming, free hands, the number to The Jasmine Dragon boba shop already punched in. “The first and foremost step to trick any man to fall in love with you is to call the motherfucker!” 

Katara blanches, nearly dropping the iPad.

“I—I can’t call him!” 

“Katara! You were just dead set on murdering him, and now you want to do the deadbeat dad dance and not follow through with your shit like child support payments?” Suki is seconds away from pressing the little green phone at the bottom of the screen. 

“Wait!” Katara yells. “What am I even supposed to say to him?” 

“Usually we just call to hear the sound of his voice and just hang up,” Suki shrugs. “Sometimes we order boba.” 

“I get it. _You’re scared_. But Katara, we can’t afford to be scared! This is just like the time the doctors said it was a bad idea to go see Nicki Minaj perform at the Ember Island Auditorium while I was waiting for my urinary tract infection results, because I could possibly die from sepsis. And what did I do, even though I was scared?” She puts a comforting hand on Katara’s shoulder. “I went to see Ms. Nincki anyway.” 

“Her kidneys were failing.” 

Toph petulantly pokes Suki. “I am a Barb before I am an Asian.” 

“Wasn’t that the time you said ‘concrete cheeks make my pussy weak’ and you got pepper sprayed in the face by a Nicki stan?” 

Suki holds her hands up in surrender when Toph violently shushes her, spit landing all over her face. 

Katara presses the button to call the store while closing her eyes, and holds on tight to the other girls’ arms. Their breaths were hot and heavy, time seemingly freezing as their hearts beat wildly. 

“Hello!” Toph could tell, based on his panting voice, he was probably just using the pull-up bar he recently installed in the back of the shop. “Welcome to The Jasmine Dragon, what can I—”

Before he finishes his sentence, Katara screams as loud as she can into the receiver, and chucks the iPad through Suki’s open window. They hear the clacking and shattering of the screen, and burst out laughing.

“That was so fun! Can we do it again?” 

//

“The second step is the drive by!” Toph excitedly exclaims, bike at the ready, with Katara sitting at the front. “We just go back and forth and pretend we didn’t even know he was working here! Because _someone_ got their license revoked, we shall channel the spirit of Kourtney Kardashian saying Kim looked like she won the Tour De France with her Yeezy biker shorts.” 

“You hit _one_ car after avoiding a dead possum and suddenly you’re the bad guy!” 

Toph scoffs. “Ok, Saint Sloptimus Prime, stop trying to sound so selfless. You hit the car because you were trying to reglue your eyelash while backing up!” 

“ _So, what_?” 

“You were on the _freeway_!”

Suki hisses at her. 

Normally, working at The Jasmine Dragon wasn’t too hard of a job. Sure it was a customer service job and he wanted to electrocute his nipples with one of these electric fly swatters to feel something again, but there were perks. Uncle Iroh doesn’t mind him bringing his weights to the shop and lifting them when the sleepy late afternoon hits, and he gets an ego boost after the local PTA comes in and stares at him in shifts. Good for business, bad for the general populace’s safety. Especially when he has to moderate tit-punching fights that usually break out for the chance to speak to him and change an order to a large. 

Usually, the hardest part is over by noon.

“What is he doing! He can’t be this stupid. Isn’t his frontal lobe already almost fully developed?” Katara moans.

“I think in his case all he hears is the Nicki Minaj ‘Anaconda’ Animal Crossing remix on a 10 hour loop,” Suki almost growls. 

They were riding back and forth in front of the shop, trying to _effortlessly_ catch his attention. But every time they were directly in front of it, he turned his head the other way. Reading up on some expensive shoe magazine, or lifting a weight, or even practicing a Kpop choreography (He was failing miserably at mastering Jihyo’s swift hand movements in Twice’s “Feel Special”). 

Katara was having the time of her life, though. She insisted they go faster and faster, until Suki and Toph were cackling as well. At this point in their lives, their feet were more accustomed to making money on a fetish website than biking. They weren’t sure when was the last time they could do things like just enjoy the fresh air, or narrowly avoid cars on the street and angry drivers that popped out their window to call them slurs.

_Finally_ , Zuko looks up from wiping down a window and their eyes lock. Suki sees the automatic blush on Katara’s face when Zuko sheepishly waves. 

What she didn’t see coming was Katara having a nervous freakout, accidentally gripping Toph’s bike brake, and promptly _eating shit_ when she was flung face-first from her spot on the handlebars. 

She certainly didn’t expect Zuko to do a dramatic, one handed leap over a table outside and rush over to her side. Like a knight in shining armor, or in his case, an Asian boy in knockoff Supreme. 

“Wow, you work here! We didn’t even know that!” Katara says as naturally as that animatronic rodent that sings kids happy birthday. 

While they anticipated Zuko to have a _cool_ approach to the whole situation and see his pussy terminating action, up close, they didn’t expect it to be so... _clumsy_. 

“ _You’re pretty_!” He exclaims, eyes focused on the gash on her knee. 

Everyone stares at him. 

His ears grow red. “What!” He tries playing it off. “All I said was ‘ _you’re bleeding_!’” 

“ _Right_ ,” Toph teases. 

“Hey! Hey!” He chastises gently, when Katara moves to get up. “We could just run it under some cold water and—” 

He falls flat on his ass, and stares up at her in bewilderment after Katara slaps both his hands away. “No, you’re _not_ going to do that.” 

Nodding in silent understanding, he just reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, carrying the few bandaids he always kept on hand because Azula was all gangly limbs now, and impossibly clumsy. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Pressing the bandaid into her soft skin. 

She knew it was dumb when she had healing abilities that could fix up the cut lickity split in about as long as it took for a man to nut in a sock. But it was _sweet_. He was sweet. And he’s looking at her like she placed some sort of spell on him, being drawn closer and closer until he’s too close. Close enough to register her shallow breaths and pretty blush and rapid blinks. 

“Where do I know you from?” He asks, almost whispering. As if it was _their_ secret. 

For the first time in her life, she’s speechless. Words drying up as though Ursula herself possessed her voice. 

“Pornhub.” Toph deadpans. 

Katara smiles, and stops herself from saying anything else, not trusting the nerves bubbling in her stomach. “It’s beautiful,” she squeaks out, patting the Peppa the Pig bandaid and resisting the urge to yack all over his pristine shoes. 

“What’s your name?” he laughs, eyes crinkling. 

“Katara!” She screams in his ear as he helps her up. She winces, but Suki and Toph see it. He practically had hearts in his eyes. 

“So _Katara_ ,” he breathes out, in an attempt to sound smooth. It would’ve worked, if he hadn’t tripped over his own laces and slammed against the glass door of the shop. “Will I see you at the street fair?” 

She nods rapidly. “What time will you—”

“Zuko!” Mai calls out from her metallic pink Mercedes Benz, special ordered on her dad’s corporate card. “I’m here for my driving lesson!” 

He nods in acknowledgement and before he leaves to grab his keys and a puke bag, he waves to Katara. Walking straight into the glass door before finding the braincells to figure out he should open it first, instead of staring at her. 

“We already have enough plastic in the ocean, Mai!” Toph yells out, while Mai clumsily maneuvers her car to get closer to the girls. 

“And we already have enough trolls under bridges sucking dicks for a Taco Bell chalupa and yet, here you are.” 

“I’ve choked you out in Spanish class and I won’t hesitate to do it again,” Toph says so calmly, it sends chills up and down Katara’s spine. 

“What’s a _Mai_?” She asks Suki. 

“She’s an influencer that lives life by the motto ‘Life is short. Might as well have a fat ass.’” 

“What does that mean?”

“It means she influences teen girls that think she’s pretty to join a pyramid scheme and buy fake lashes off an Instagram shop.” 

“Interesting,” she nods along. “So do we just sit back and watch them fight? Is this how it works?” 

“Yes!” Suki confirms. “Sometimes, when it gets physical, we yell ‘WorldStar!’ and start recording via IG live. You can be in charge of holding Toph’s earrings, I’ll hold her hair.” 

“I thought a bitch who tries on swimsuits without their underwear on and leaves behind a snail trail of vagina snot said something!” Toph is the least bit deterred when Mai starts playing around with her set of sharpened, pastel pink knives. 

“Didn’t realize you grew green feathers and you’re holding a gun to my head and threatening me to master proper nouns in Japanese,” Mai says, expecting a supportive laugh from Ty Lee, but instead she’s met with confused stares. “I’m calling you a bird, Toph.” 

“I don’t know what version of Duolingo you’re trying to learn from, but could you just leave us alone?” Suki tries, and Katara also nods along. 

“You know I opened the app by accident today and the Duolingo bird was staring at me with shame and despair,” Ty Lee helpfully provides. 

Mai rolls her eyes. “Anyways. We just wanted to meet _her_. She’s pretty,” she points a perfectly manicured finger in Katara’s direction. She gestures to the blue streaks. “For an e-girl who said something racist and moved Twitter accounts to avoid the backlash!” 

Suki gasps, offended for Katara, smacking her outstretched hand away. “You take that back, bitch! I will not hesitate to hang you upside down from your pubes.” 

“Why do you always want to fight us, bitch? Can you take some heartburn medication and move on with your day?” Toph is exasperated at this point, while Katara watches along in amusement. 

“It’s because _you_ ,” Mai jabs the air in Toph’s direction. “Asked if you could touch my hair junior year.” 

“So? You said _yes_?” Toph defends herself. 

“ _You started stroking my upper lip_!” 

Katara watches Ty Lee and Mai nod in agreement. When Mai moves the car to get even closer to the girls, and Ty Lee starts taking off her earrings, Katara sees her opportunity. She clandestinely bends a puddle Mai rolled over, to splash in their faces. 

“Oops?” She shrugs. 

Ty Lee, drenched in the street’s bootyhole water, gets out of the car fists aimed solely at Suki. However, Suki decided that this year was going to be _the year_ she stopped smacking bitches. She wanted a drama free existence, she wanted to work on herself, you know! There wasn’t time to fight in college. 

“Don’t be _fucking rude_!” Suki screams, smacking the other girl with her purse and knocking her to the ground. 

“What _the fuck_ do you have in there?!” Ty Lee rubs at her bruising side. 

See, Suki doesn’t fight anymore. She just started carrying bricks around. 

The same brick Katara throws through Mai’s windshield, and lands in her empty passenger seat. 

// 

“Look back. Ok, arch your back. Tits further out! Play with your hair!” 

“This is a lot of work!” Katara was bent at an awkward angle but figured if the Instagram baddies would do it, so would she. 

Her head was still pounding over the hour before the street fair they spent poring over the _Cosmopolitan_ magazines Toph had hidden away in her closet. Suki loaded any _Teen Vogue_ articles about anal and they read and read over bags of gummy worms and a Morton’s salt can they got Katara to stress munch on because she missed the ocean water. She didn’t think Rachel Van Nes’s “4 Exercises That’ll Make Your Vagina So Tight It Becomes a Dick Guillotine” or Lara Catone’s _You Might Call It Discharge, I Call It Divine Nectar_ was going to be any help, but she went along with it anyways. To the point where she was becoming addicted, and they had to rip the phone out of her rapidly scrolling fingers. 

Girl world was tough. 

“ _She’s too pretty for you_ !” Aang reminds Zuko as they tried their best to _not_ make it obvious they were watching the trio. 

The girls themselves were also trying their best to look inconspicuous, doing the thing all girls do when their friend likes a guy. They take clandestine photos from the most unassuming angle they could. Girls were trained in this art, practically experts at making sure their flash was already turned off. Phone placed on silent mode was practically a mandate of the Bible (Rihanna’s selfie book).

“I may be vegetarian, but I will make an exception to eat that ass,” Aang comments, and Zuko smacks him on his head so hard it sounded like a boiled chicken being dropped from a countertop. 

“See! This! This is _exactly_ the reason I have you blocked on all social media platforms,” Zuko sighs. He was in one of his nicer striped Guess shirts because he just wanted her to _like him_ . It’s been a while since they’ve seen him falling this hard for a girl, talking about her non-stop. Aang and Jet were pleasantly surprised. They’ve already placed their bets on when _exactly_ he would fuck it up (Aang said 20 minutes from now, Jet said 45). 

“I’d drink her pee,” Jet murmurs, and Zuko snatches the bottle from his hands in retaliation. 

“Stop drinking Patron in the daytime,” he admonishes, but takes a swig himself. 

She was certifiably cute, and, like the bald ass muncher said, too cute for him. 

While his other Asian fuckboy friends would have probably supported him and most likely would’ve said something misogynistic along with it, Jet and Aang were the type of friends who prevented him from getting tattoos of people’s faces on his back, like Drake’s Zoom meeting looking ass. 

Zuko still remembers when he was one of those theater kids begging to be bullied. Hissing at people in the hallway, singing at all times of the day, and drawing anime nipples on Deviantart. No matter how shitty their club’s productions of “Legally Blonde” or “Love Amongst the Dragons” were and, no matter how many times they always cast him as Bush #2, it was shooters for the theater club. (Apparently throwing a knife at a kid for drawing penises on their fundraising posters _was_ a criminal offense and landed him in the depths of the school therapist’s office every Wednesday afternoon before sixth period.)

Being a theater kid was an escape from the meetings where he croaked on the projected profits for the year. Even as a teen barely growing into his nose and out of his velcro Go, Diego, go! sandals, he was expected to be a perfect heir to the company. All he could do as a kid was take it. Take the abuse, take the pain, take the feelings of inadequacy. He never came out of his old life with his heart completely whole. Then, Uncle Iroh gave him a chance.

He never minded their constant moves, or living paycheck to paycheck as much as he said he did. It was strange, though. Growing up with a silver spoon in his mouth for the universe just to rip it out and promptly shoving it up his anal cavity. Yet, Uncle Iroh always managed to make it work. He rose up the ranks from a bumbling Bobarista, to a manager, to owning his own store. After his first chain was up and running, he was getting offers to open up an even bigger and better Jasmine Dragon on Ember Island. He immediately said yes, and Zuko didn’t mind the chance for a change in pace his last year of high school. 

The boys on Ember Island immediately saw the potential a gravelly voice, cool scar, and the mental instability to fight people for no reason could have. They quickly took him under their wing. 

It wasn't hard for him to figure out, under their tutelage, that once he ditched his mediocre Idina Menzel impression for football, his _Hamilton_ album for Travis Scott, and his Dr. Who suspenders for a dangling cross earring, that _he was hot_. 

He had to admit, it was addicting, at first. Cracking the code on the pussy puzzle after being provided his first vape pen and chain. He was forced into flirting with girls who once avoided him because he looked like he could conjure a Satanic spirit to their Subarus, and they were liking it. But, he was still a ways away from being as smooth as some of his peers, or being able to retain the attention of anybody without fucking it up somehow.

Uncle insisted he was born with their family’s curse of painful awkwardness, and it only became clear as day when he was stumbling over things he wanted to say to pretty girls. They didn’t care, at first. Girls were trained to look first, listen last when it came to men. They thought it was _cute_. But it usually never lasted for long. 

Sometimes he wonders if it’s him.

If he was born with _something_ that made it easy to drive people away. His whole life, people weren’t interested in hearing what he had to say, and the pattern only continued with people like Mai, or Chan. People who thought they had a hold on who he was. 

He knew things would be different in college. When he would let his closeted theater kid run free. College was a time to just figure out who he was away from the people of his past. He only partially succeeded, more so distracting himself by practically becoming a gynecologist from how many crotches he inspected up close. 

He made a promise with himself not to head home for the summer, to not ruin the progress he’s made. But, he found out his internship was cancelled after the company’s CEO was caught for running a Cardi B stan Twitter and leaked Nicki Minaj’s number every time she changed it. He begrudgingly shoved his bong and his pride in his barely working Walmart suitcase planning to take a bus and travel to who knows where. He only went home after Uncle insisted, picking odd jobs here and there. 

As much as it pained him to admit it, it was nice. The attention his perfected confidence got him, like when moms opted to stare at him instead of feeding their kids vitamins. Waking up after a post-nut nap to food being ready was a perk, instead of starving and praying the dining halls didn’t serve up white people food that, a few hours later, would make his bootyhole sound like it opened up a Soundcloud account and dropped a mixtape. 

While the attention since his homecoming has been nice, it was a while since he’s had this bad of _a crush_. The rest of the world might’ve seen him as suave, but he found he was having a hard time convincing Katara. 

Especially after his friends shoved them at each other, tired of the lovestruck stares. 

He doesn’t know why he was suddenly at a loss for words, stumbling over a response and all the while managing to trip on himself and his newest purchase of the week: his Reebok Classic Leather in White/Gum (a mandate in the Asian man Bible). Of course, he fully expects to have his Invisalign retainer breaking from how hard he was clenching his teeth in preparation to eat shit, but he doesn’t have to calculate the cost of his dental insurance. Not when his eyes flutter open to her. 

It takes him a moment to realign himself out of her hold, and she just looks _mad._

It wasn’t his fault, really, that she had resting murder face and was plotting his death so she wouldn’t have to think about the feeling of his electrifying touch. 

“I guess I just...fell for you?” Zuko tries playing off his clumsiness with his signature hand carding through his messy hair trick that _usually_ got most pussy lips moist enough to spit a Megan Thee Stallion verse. He coughs uneasily into his hand and turns away from her when she immediately laughs at his embarrassment. 

“ _Shut the fuck up_ !” She says, smiling. All with a high-pitched, bubblegum voice. Giggling and twirling a piece of hair around her finger to flirt, like the articles taught her. “Your ankles look so _skinny_ , so easy to snap in half.” 

By the looks of it, she meant it as a compliment.

“Thank you?” He accepts it hesitantly. A smile blooms on his face regardless. 

Noticing how enraptured she was with the cotton candy machine in front of them, following its every move by circling her own head until she got dizzy, he gestures towards it. “Are you...um. Like are you, I don’t know. Uh. Hungry?” He points to the stack of the booth’s menus, and in his haste shoves all 40 of them in her hands ungracefully. Outside of being in someone’s guts, he’s never had the chance to work this hard for a girl’s attention. He scratches the back of his neck, and takes an emergency hit from his juul. “It’s on me?” He awkwardly notes, sending her a terse smile. The smallest one she sends back has his heart seizing. 

He didn’t even mind for the first couple seconds when she took a hold of the treat, she was rubbing her face against it instead of eating it, and Toph and Suki doing an excellent job of discreetly screaming at her to just eat it. She was just so _cute._ For the next few snacks he buys her, he makes sure he takes a bite first, just in case she was unfamiliar with Ember Island cuisine. 

Katara’s all blushes and running on pure nerves because he was _sweet_ . Nothing like what Sokka, or the girls say about him being _cool_ or what his tattoos and all the piercings he filled with pretty, silver jewelry might’ve suggested. She’s decided he was the furthest from it. 

He was _too sweet_ , the tooth-rotting kind. 

For the rest of the time they walk around the fairgrounds, he tries his hardest at making her feel comfortable, explaining things here and there after noticing her flinch at the carnival games’ loud noises. He was too eager to buy any fried food she was looking at for just a second too long, or try to win toys for her when something catches her eye, 

She _really_ wanted the extra large sky bison plush, and _really_ wanted to squeeze it, but the booth owner snatched it away from her hands before she could. Because he _really_ wanted to impress her, he decided he would try to tap into whatever athletic ability he had just to see her smile. Even if it meant playing the game over and over again, dwindling his cash supply for the night because he was just a guy with a crush. When she glanced his way, his brows were knitted in intense concentration, squeezing the toy gun so a stream of water landed in a plastic clown head’s mouth. He’s pouting, though. After all that time, he only won the smallest toy they have after coming in 4th place. 

Because Katara was just as determined to win the damn toy, she pushes Zuko aside, much to his shock, and snatches the dollar from his hand to play in the next round. She’s snapping her fingers and flicking the stream of the water gun so it lands perfectly in the clown’s mouth. 

“Hit the juul.” Suki begins, closely watching Zuko, who hasn’t taken his eyes off Katara.

“Stretch the arms.” 

“And flex!” Toph exclaims.

“ _He likes her_!” They scream in unison. 

It’s nearing 5 p.m., hardly witching hour, and yet he wracks his brain for any explanation. Against all logic and reason, he’s drunk off of _her_. 

“You think I’m pretty?” She rolls her eyes at the comment he lets slip past his mouth and he presses both hands to his mouth in shock. She let go of the water gun mounted down to the counter. “What do you want from me?

“What do you mean!” He leans his body against the counter. 

“People are only ever this nice when they want something.” She teases, and he evades eye contact so she wouldn’t see the blush creeping up his neck. “What, do you want me to win you a toy, too?” 

The carnival employee hands over the plush, flying bison toy and she squishes it to her face and lets out the sweetest and softest and prettiest giggle that was just music to his ears. She’s the closest to perfect he’s seen, and he’s not sure how she hasn’t picked up on the fact that without even trying, he was falling under her spell. 

She likes being around him, feeling light and just _good_. She couldn’t help it, letting herself get wrapped in every word, hanging off each one he speaks and was on the verge of begging for more. She forgets about Sokka’s fuck up, forgets about possibly murdering Zuko or whatever, forgets about Toph and Suki trailing behind. 

It was _fun_. The magazines or anal tutorials didn’t prepare her for this. How she feels all tingly when she catches him staring, or when he throws his arm over her shoulders and she feels woozy. She likes the way she doesn't even have to say anything and he instantly picks up on her shivers that has him slipping his Bathing Ape jacket over her shoulders, or holding the plushie and freeing her hands so she could inhale fried squid. 

She gags. “Gross.” 

“What?” He’s too amused when she feels comfortable enough to just shove him forward when she catches him staring at her mid-squid-chew. Of course, he doesn’t let her get away with it. Instead, when she catches up to his spot, he holds her close until she practically melts. 

“Stop looking at me like that.” She pouts, clutching the plushie closer to cool her warming face. 

He shrugs. “Like what?” He tosses everything away for her, and separates the trash so everything goes in the right bins. 

“Like,” she gulps. “Like you’re just—I don’t know.” She nearly grunts. “Forget it.” 

“Like I like you?” 

She ponders it for maybe half a second, meeting his amused eyes. “Yeah. Like that.”

He thinks it should be illegal to feel this good and, in the words of Saweetie, him wanting so desperately to suck on that pussy like a Cuban Monte Christo. 

Though, all that confidence is wiped when she’s the one who wordlessly grabs his hand and he turns beet red, praying she doesn’t notice his unnaturally sweaty palms he should probably get checked with a doctor. Of course, he knows how the saying goes about catching flies if you leave your mouth open or whatever, but he never expected that choking on a fly would be so painful. 

Katara pounds on his back a few times until he coughs enough times the fly frees itself from his esophagus. As fast as his legs could take him, he ran to the nearest booth with those overpriced, light up lemonades in a mason jar, even almost running over a child vomiting in their mom’s knockoff Gucci bag after eating their weight in strawberry funnel cake. 

Zuko quickly snatches up someone’s drink, slurping it down to cool his throat’s burn. 

“If it isn’t _Prince Zuko_.” 

He recognized the voice of one of his father’s head advisors anywhere. 

“Zhao,” he spits at him. He turns back and sees Katara distractedly staring at a DJ playing a trap remix to the Pokemon theme song. 

“Always pleasant to see you,” Zhao mutters, wiping the slobber of his face. 

Zuko scoffs, throwing the mason jar at the man, who doesn’t quite catch it in time. It bounces off his stomach and breaks on the ground. 

Though he hadn’t heard much about Zuko since his father went to prison, Zhao always had an inkling suspicion after Azulon’s fall, always had his assumptions. After losing his job, his family, and his own sanity after serving time, it was all too easy to blame the young boy, to hate him with all of his heart. 

When Katara hears his blood-curling scream, she turns her head and sees him fall. She bolts off without even thinking about it. 

Her blood runs cold at the sight of him, clutching his face and sprawled on the ground. 

“Zuko!” 

“Did the acid burn my face off?”

“Acid?!” She shrieks, whipping her head around until she sees _him_ , trying to scramble away. 

She throws herself on his back, clawing at his eyes. “What the fuck did you just do to him, _Zhao_?” 

He freezes at the way she says his name, spitting it out with pure hatred. She just chokes him even harder, until he falls to the ground and rolls away from her. She grabs a seashell off the ground, bending water to sharpen its edges and holds it to his throat. “What. Happened.” 

“It was Sprite.” He throws the soda can from under his jacket. “It was Sprite!” When she breathes a sigh of relief, she punches him square in the face, even freezing some lemonade between her knuckles to assist her in bloodying his face. 

Whatever, she’d kill him after date night was over. 

“Sorry I ruined tonight,” he murmurs, face resting in her lap as she wiped away the soda on his face. He clutches her hands. “Stop! You’re going to hurt yourself. You know, the acid and all.” 

“Again, it’s Sprite.” 

“Oh.” He wanted to die. “Still stingy.” 

"Your chain's turning your neck green." 

He tries to look down at his neck. "Fuck." 

She barely suppressed a giggle behind her hand. Her laugh infected him with enough warmth to smooth over the hot humiliation. Soon enough, he was laughing, too and forgetting he was laying on a pretty girl’s lap in the middle of a carnival, and his head was dangerously close to the spot on the ground where a lactose intolerant kid just vomited up his fourth McFlurry of the day. 

“How do you know who Zhao was?” He ponders, getting up with her help. “And why do you know how to fight?” 

“Long story.” She quirks a brow his way. “Why do you have ugly, old men throwing acid, sorry I mean _soda_ , in your face?” 

He wipes the remaining drink away from his forehead. “Longer story.” 

“I have time.” 

“Yeah?” He smirks. “I have time, too.” 

//

He holds her tight until her body is warm to his touch. Guiding her carefully in the pedal boat she called “sea bikes” on the nearby lake. 

He holds her hand without a word, and his touch is all soft and sweet and makes her want more and more. 

He’s scared he’s said too much. He starts from the _beginning_ beginning, and even though he’s slurring his words from talking too fast, she’s avidly listening. Even when he accidentally talks too much about the research he was doing with Aang under Suki’s mom, she didn’t seem to mind him complaining about the days he was just picking up straws and trash from the shore. Hell, he just met the girl and was delving into the family company and even fucking family trauma. That usually was a fourth date topic, right? 

The last thing he wanted was for her to feel sorry for him, to pity him. Especially not after she explained what happened with Zhao’s pollution plant and her home. 

She doesn’t recoil, doesn’t press him to share more about Azulon, doesn’t push him. 

All she does is nod in quiet understanding. And when he meets her eyes, and sees that same look of pain, of anger, she squeezes his hand a little tighter. 

She felt like _she_ talked his ear off. Talking about everything and anyone and anything she was feeling (sans mentioning, you know, the whole _mermaid_ situation). 

“I hate that feeling, you know? Sometimes, I don’t know if I’m doing shit for me, or if I’m—I don’t know. Living my life based off of someone else’s dreams,” her fiery attitude suddenly turns into something so soft. “Did I overshare?” she mumbles, looking unsure. With that look alone, he has to resist the urge to just hold her and devote his life to protecting her from the world. He taps her chin so she’s looking at him. 

“I’m sorry,” is all he says.

“For what?” She nudges him gently.

“That we had to grow up in a world like this.” 

“Yeah?” She nods sadly. “I’m sorry, too,” she breathes out.

“It fucking sucks.” 

She rolls her eyes. “Eloquently put.” Even when she tries resisting it, it still puts a smile on her face. 

He didn’t want to tear his eyes from her, in case he misses a smile, in case he doesn’t catch her nose wrinkling at a turtleduck that manages to waddle its way into their boat. He’s distracted enough that sometimes his foot misses a pedal, forcing her to work extra hard to make sure they don’t run into a geratric couple. 

“Stop it!” She says, completely serious. 

“What?” 

“You’re staring.” She didn't hate it. 

He shrugs. “Art is meant to be admired.” 

Before she could get a word in and call him _lame_ , she gasped. “Sunset,” is all she says. 

He hears her voice shift to something so _panicked_. “We timed it pretty well, didn’t we—” 

“I have to go!” She wails. 

“Fuck!” Toph throws her ice cream cone at Suki’s face. “She’s going to pop a tail!” 

She’s pedaling as hard as she can, Zuko couldn’t even match her pace. “Let’s talk about something to get your mind off of things? What are you doing tomorrow?” 

“What!” She squawks. “Zuko, pedal faster!” 

“Where do you have to go?” He questioned. 

She meets his bewildered gaze and wants to hit herself. “I have a um. An entanglement.” 

“What!” 

“Just go faster!” 

Zuko tries again at the whole comforting thing. “There’s this thing called The Last Splash and it's like a dance, party thing that's kind of lame. But if, you know, if you’re not going with anyone, maybe we could—” 

“Suki! Toph!” They had their hands outstretched and when they reached the deck, they both snatched her up before the pedal boat went into its designated spot. 

“Run, bitch, run!” They scream at her. 

She’s in such a rush, she doesn’t notice the little confused wave he sends her way, a dumb smile on his face. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FIRST OFF! I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO FUCKING LONG! The mercury retr*grade got me all different types of FUCKED UP and listen. Every mercury retrograde this year has fucked me up like my computer broke, my phone broke and I didn't have a phone for like 4 months I was using a busted android that didn't even get service and this last retrograde? omg I got HACKED someone really was using me to sell NBA jerseys anyways 
> 
> SECOND OFF! I LOVE YALL SO MUCH!
> 
> THIRD OFF! the first one to comment gets to steal one of my fenty glosses and/or punch me in the tit like i promised
> 
> FOURTH OFF!! part 3 will be up ASAP 
> 
> FIFTH OFF!!! did I mention I love you?


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